Risk

It was in May of 1999-the summer my nephew Myles was born. The previous two years had been a whirlwind of trying to finish my degree through a teaching practicum, becoming a teacher’s aide and then rapidly filling in as a Science and English teacher, because the regular teacher was on maternity leave. It was the hardest job I’ve ever had. I was working with kids with a host of problems that played themselves out emotionally and behaviorally. Most mornings, I would come into school at 7am for a faculty meeting and I’d be walking into a war zone (insert your “Dangerous Minds” jokes here) there would already be fights, conflicts, insults being hurled at staff and if I happened to be in the way I would also get “fuck you, you fucking bitch”. There were knives, guns, suicides, gangs, etc.

I took my job very seriously. It was hard to know what behaviors to confront and what behaviors to “let slide”. Many of the staff had different approaches to that. Some were more lax, while others were very disciplined. It was often confusing to know how to approach each situation and for the most part I felt like I was learning as I went. For instance, we know kids were going to smoke, so we designated an area for them to do so. The amount of damage control and energy to forbid smoking was not worth it. I guess in those scenarios, you better know how to pick your battles. I didn’t always know how to do that.

I had one student in particular that I seemed to connect with on a very deep level. He would often disassociate in class or fall asleep on his desk. As a teacher’s aide, I would bring him out of class and we would walk around the school yard, several times and would try and help him “get grounded”. Sometimes we would talk, but mostly we would just walk and I taught him diaphragmatic breathing.

I remember how his behaviors were vexing and annoying to many. It was truthfully hard to know what was going through his head. He would do things impulsively or stare off into space or pull the fire alarm seemingly unknowing of what he was doing, but there was no mistaking how smart this kid was and how big is heart was. I tutored him after school in Geography. Did I have an experience teaching Geography? NO. But this kid was so into “earthquakes, compression, wind, erosion, etc” and I figured that was the hook. Maybe he was hoping some natural disaster would come and take all the pain away and save him. I don’t know. All I know it was during that time that I began to realize how deeply rooted his trauma was and how courageous and resilient this child was. I also started to have nightmares about the abuse he had endured. It’s sort of hard to write this because the care-taker in me starts to wonder where he is right now and if he’s okay. I’m guessing that he is. I’m guessing he’d be about, well, 24 years old now or around there.

Ironically, this journal assignment is about a risk I took that required a lot of courage and I intended to write about my cross-country trip, but all these events had lead up to that, so I had to preface what I was experiencing prior to this. I was a young teacher. Too young, I believe. Looking back, I had loans to pay and what else does one do with a B.A. in English, except I wasn’t living on Avenue Q, I was living with my grandmother and there was a whole bunch of family stuff going on that I don’t need to get into.

A friend of the person I was dating at the time (I’m leaving out names for the sake of anonymity here), was rebuilding a T1 1967 Volkswagen Bus. That was the last year they made them with the split windshields referred to as the “Microbus” or the “Splittie”. I called it the “Winged Warrior”.

I knew nothing about VW buses at the time. All I heard was “we’ll be camping every night”. Camping…what…the? ME? A sense of terror came over me. I’d never, in all my years, camped. EVER. I grew up in a very suburban area, but my parents were city folk. We used to go places, but two things we never did was ski or camp. I attempted skiing one time on a hill in our back yard with some old-fashioned skis and let’s just say it ended up in an involuntary split and a fit of frustration. Would I survive the wild, blue yonder? Would I find gold? I have to admit there’s always was and always will be something majestic and spirited about “Going West” like the Liz Phair song off Whip-Smart.

But would a polar bear kill me? Would I be attacked my wild wolves in the night? I remember hesitation, but I also remember the time to say “yay” or “nay’ was running out. There was a 5 person limit, it wouldn’t cost much because “camping is cheap”, but I would need to pitch in for gas and obviously pay for food.


I have to preface this by saying, I kind of am and always will be, a “comfort junkie.” I mean, it was worse then than it is now. I’ve been through some very uncomfortable things, but I mean, physically, the thought of braving the elements, bugs, strange towns, etc. Just get me to the nearest Best Western with room service please, if you know what I mean. The prospect of sleeping in a tent on the ground for over a month, scared the shit out of me. But call it what you will, unrelenting curiosity, stubbornness, my Taurus nature, I was damn well going on that trip. The deal was sealed when I saw the map route my mechanic-wizard friend had laid out. I mean, when in my life was I ever going to get to traverse 33 states in 30 days on roughly $700 bucks? “Never,“ I thought. This must be done. I also remember I had an exit strategy if I got too anxious and had to come home. I remember my Mom saying something like “you can fly home if you don’t like it”. I guess that option never occurred to me. I suppose I should thank my Mom and anyone else who said that to me, because if I hadn’t realized there was an option to come home, I might have never left.

My brother’s second son Myles was born on June 13, 1999. I remember battling with our principal/boss over leaving school a few days earlier than the term was ending. I had absences in my reserve. Looking back, he was just a lost man on a sinking ship, looking but I remember thinking “okay, well, just fire me then.”

I had made up my mind. And one thing I know about me, good or bad, is that when I make up my mind to do something, I’m going to do it even if it kills me and though I may fall down and cry or bitch and moan for a little bit, I eventually get back up. Eventually. But always.

So off we went. I didn’t know what a compression sac was, but I was told to buy one and stuff my sleeping back in it as tightly as possible because we had to store 5 peoples belongings in one cabinet seat. So I packed light, got a water canteen, traveler’s checks (which ended up being kind of unnecessary, but I read it was a good idea in case you lose your ATM), waterproof matches, flashlight, camera, etc.

I even bought a tent and I had no idea what to do with it. I practiced in my yard with a cheap A-frame from Building 19. Then I bought the Coleman, 3-sleeper. This was getting serious.

I don’t think I slept the night before. In fact, I‘m almost certain I didn‘t, because the first leg of the trip I was wanting so badly to go home and I was extremely overtired in New York and Ohio. But I remember this feeling of complete and utter freedom pulling out of my friend’s dirt driveway in New Hampshire. “How brazen is this”? I thought” as we all looked at each other in unsure excitement. Who does this? Who ups and leaves for over a month to go explore the country. How irresponsible? How AWESOME!? I had read Kerouac and I knew Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, so I could do this, right? I wasn’t alone. These friends would help me through, right? But would I fall apart? Would I make it? As we drove down that dirt road at dusk on that early New Hampshire morning, I felt something electric and scary and beautiful pulsate through me.

The next month was a journey of trial and error and trial and error and beauty that unsurpassed anything I have ever seen in all my life. Each day was a new landscape. We were usually on the road by 5am or so. My poor friend always had to wake me up (not much of a morning person. Still not), but as soon as we’d get going, I felt it again, staring out the windows of the bus as we whirred through miles of cornfields, listening to Joni Mitchell or Jim Croce, journaling, taking pictures---I felt it. The coyotes and buffalos of Yellowstone, the stratum of rock in the Badlands, muskrats in Utah, the little boy I met at the farmer’s market in Iowa who hugged me and brought me to tears, running into the pacific ocean for the first time in my life, a real Ghost-town in Montana, impromptu jam sessions in Ten Sleeps, WY, outside an old saloon--tumbleweed blowing across the main road, raccoons stealing our ice in Indiana as we laughed hysterically to the sound of them chomping on it, swimming naked in a man-made reservoir in Kansas, the magnificent Redwoods, the sound of my heart beating out of my chest in North Fork, California when I could hear and see wild animals right outside our tent and the long journey of a large animal dragging a metal object from what seemed like miles, as its shadow cast its shadow on my tent.



Those were tough times. Arriving at a new campsite and reading the announcements with pictures of recently-spotted bears, so many, that we had to lock anything with a scent, even cosmetics, in a large metal vault. Those were the nights I had to face my own fears, often not sleeping, but up and off for another 10 hours of driving the next day. To be fair, my mechanic friend did all of the driving and a lot of the other totally necessary things I would come to appreciate, but not at first. If it weren’t for the support and tough-love of him and my friends, I wouldn’t have made it. I finished several books and filled a journal. I took 9 or 10 rolls of film. One of my books was “She’s Come Undone” by Wally Lamb. I finished it in a bathroom in Montana and bawled my eyes out. I passed it around. We were passing everything around, food, books, music. Somehow everyone had a turn some Marquis de Sade and we joked for several days about “buggering”.

The most memorable day was on the last leg before we turned around and came home. The pristine Glaciers in Glacier Park and the sound of the VW’s bus as it inched up the mountain like an old dog made my heart swell. I felt my Pepere’s presence for the first time in over ten years as I wept tears of joy and how magnificent this natural place, was untouched by anything or anyone, I wished he could have been there to see it, but he was there. It was undeniable. I wished also, that my students could have seen something so breath-taking. Some of those kids had never even been to the ocean. I felt incredibly blessed…..

(to be continued)